Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Wikipedia Contaminated By Rawat's Kool-Aid

File under: Gurubusting, Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

We told you about this a few months ago, but now London, U.K.'s The Register has chronicled the activities of Prem Rawat stooge Jossi Fresco, who just happens to be in the most inner circle of Wikipedia, charged with the task of keeping the articles fair and balanced (and not in the Fox News way.) Guess which article is not fair or balanced:

This administrator, Jossi Fresco, is a longtime student of Prem Rawat - formerly Guru Maharaj Ji - the India-born spiritual leader who styled himself as the "Perfect Master" and fostered a worldwide religious movement encouraging followers to call him "Lord of the Universe."

Jossi Fresco openly acknowledges he's employed by an organization "related" to Prem Rawat, and according to an ex-Rawat-follower and former friend, he served on the guru's personal staff and built the guru's first web site. Nonetheless, Fresco maintains strict control over Wikipedia’s Prem Rawat article and countless related articles, keeping criticism of his guru to a bare minimum...

"All critical material was moved to an article of its own: 'Criticism of Prem Rawat," says a senior admin. "Jossi created that, with the intent that it wouldn't over-burden the main article. But then that article was merged back into the main article and basically deleted. All that critical material was pretty much all deleted, so the current article bears very little resemblance to the article of two years ago. It's shorter, and it's all positive."

And there's plenty of criticism of Rawat out there, just ask the ex-Premies.

There's a total of six pages of investigative reporting on this info-sham at Wikipedia by The Register. Those interested in understanding the siddhi of PR might do well to read it.

The "discussion" page of the the Wiki article on Prem Rawat contains many entries by "Momento," whom I assume is the admin. In any case, these include the following absurd claim:

Rawat suffers from two major faults. He became a famous religious figure at a young age and he is Indian.

For what it's worth, I've added the following to that discussion:

The above speculation that criticism of Rawat stems from his being "a famous religious figure at a young age" and being Indian is unsupported and defies logic. It's far far more reasonable to conclude that the criticism stems from his explicit claims (from a young age) that he was the "Lord of the Universe." The fact that he made such claims, and then later backed off from them without any explanation or apology, is a much much more logical conclusion re why he's been criticized. It's a well-documented fact -- that Rawat claimed to be the Perfect Master, Lord of the Universe, who encouraged followers to surrender everything to him as their object of devotion. It's inexcusable to leave this historical fact out of the article.

.... An appropriate name for your blog could have been Neti Neti.— Rama

While we understand that gurus are held sacred by many, they
are also public figures deserving of scrutiny. Our primary aim
is to inject a little humor into what can be an excessively
self-righteous enterprise, and to illustrate the primary truth that
no matter how divine their devotees believe them to be, gurus
poop on the same pot we do.